Rachelle Rojany: Heads

Rachelle Rojany Heads
May 8 to June 15, 2013
Reception: May 8th, 5:30 to 7:30

James Harris Gallery is pleased to present our first solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Rachelle Rojany. In a new body of work titled Heads, Rojany has departed from her previous conceptual sculpture of geometric form and shifted to unabashed figurative representation. The previous work referenced a relationship to the body and now the artist freely explores the human form directly through plaster sculpture and portrait painting.

Diagonally bisecting the room is an eleven foot long wall constructed out of plywood. On top of this wall the artist has placed plaster heads. Rojany uses realistic detail along with vigorous sketchy modeling of the plaster to create haunting, expressive objects. On some works, ink is used to demarcate eyes and mouths. The hand of the artist is seen through the manipulation of the plaster medium and is in stark contrast to the plywood wall on which they are displayed.

As one walks around the wall, it opens up to a tunnel in which the artist has hung a multitude of portrait paintings. Viewers are invited through the tunnel where color and form play a pivotal role in the accessibility of these paintings. Rojany’s painting gesture is crude yet refined adding tension and beauty to the personality of each portrait. The tight confines of the viewing space acts as a narrow gangplank, making it difficult to maneuver and back away. The dialogue between the paintings and the sculpture, between the slipping plaster and the slippery paint, explores a tension between what is hidden and what is revealed in this crawl through humanity.

Rachelle Rojany is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. She has been an artist in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Zentralburo in Berlin, and the Vermont Studio Center. She has exhibited her work in Los Angeles, New York and Cologne.

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

GALLERY NEWS

We are pleased to announce:

Claire Cowie is one of Facebook’s artists-in-residence at the company’s new Seattle office in South Lake Union. Cowie was drawn to the challenge of embodying the idea of the tangent, of conversation threads and the edges and intersections of communication. Click here to read about the project in City Arts.

Andrew Witkin presents Syndicates at the University of New Hampshire Museum of Art. This exhibition includes text-based works, graphic elements, woven fabrics and collages of newspaper photographs that collectively blur the systematic with the haphazard in which meaning is layered and elusive. On view January 25 – March 31, 2018.

Also Announcing

Richard Rezac solo exhibition Address at The Renaissance Society, Chicago. In this show the Chicago-based artist presents new, old, and reworked pieces spanning his last decade of production. In its presentation, Address is attentive to the nuances of the gallery’s neo-gothic architecture, curated by Solveig Øvstebø. On view April 21 – June 17, 2018

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ARTISTS

PAST EXHIBITS

PAST EXHIBITS

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